WaMu: Vultures Are Circling

Outside of Washington Mutual headquarters this morning, things didn’t look so rosy. The local CBS affiliate sent a news crew to report on WaMu’s potential insolvency and the big hit the stock took yesterday.

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If the media keeps blowing on the flames by reporting on potential bank failures, they might just come up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Tags: bank, bank failure, banks, cameron newland, FDIC, indymac, insolvency, savings and loan, Seattle, thrift, wamu, washington mutual

WaMu Rumors

Shares of Washington Mutual slid 35% during the trading session today, on fears of the bank failing after IndyMac Bank was taken over by the FDIC over the weekend.

The bank’s position is solid, with over $40 billion in liquidity and $150 billion in retail deposits, according to a Business Wire brief sent out at the end of trading.

Unfortunately, people aren’t very trusting of bank CEOs right now, what with Bear Stearns’ outright denial that it was troubled up until the day it was bought for pennies on the dollar by JPMorgan.

My mother rang me just now and told me that she’d just returned from Washington Mutual, where she’d withdrawn all of her money after hearing from her boss’ lawyer that WaMu was going down.

Now, there is no reason to foolishly panic. The only people who need to do anything with their bank accounts are those who have more than $100,000 deposited at any single bank. Those people ought to withdraw money and put it into similar accounts at other banks, so as to ensure that all their deposits are FDIC-protected.

Washington Mutual may not be the best-managed bank in the world, but it’s an important employer in my state, and I’d like it to stay solvent. Tell your friends the truth, and correct them when they spread inaccurate rumors.

Inaccurate rumors kill banks, and in the end, it may be someone dear to you — a bank employee — who gets fired because of it.

What if my bank fails? – BusinessWeek

Spain Takes Over

Spaniard Rafael Nadal is just coming off historic wins at Wimbledon and Roland Garros.  The Spanish national soccer team won the European Championship at the end of June, decisively defeating stalwart Russia and then hosing host-country Germany in the final.  Spain is the current world basketball champion, having defeated Greece in 2006, and the world’s undisputed best chef, Ferran Adrià, calls Spain home.  Spain’s economy is steamrolling the rest of Europe’s, having passed Italy in per-capita GDP in 2006, and is on course to overtake France and Germany in that measure in the next 5 years.

The Spanish are bouyed by tourism, a housing boom, population growth from immigration, a strong fashion/retail sector, and banking.  In fact, I used to work for Spanish banking giant BBVA, which has a massive footprint in fast-growing Latin America.  BBVA bought a large bank in the southern U.S., Compass Bancshares, just last year.

BBVA’s chief rival is Santander, a group that has also made significant inroads in Latin America, but has bought into U.K. banks instead of the American ones.

Santander bought British banking giant Abbey National for £9.5 billion in 2004, and today, they’ve announced that they’re buying British retail bank Alliance & Leicester for £2.6 billion;a 50% discount from A&L’s market value in February of this year. Talk about a steal.

This acquisition will give Santander another 8% of the banking market in the U.K., and allow for a combination of Abbey and Alliance & Leicester to realize real cost savings, making this acquisition even more worthwhile for Santander.

World Population Day

July 11th is World Population Day!

In 1968, world leaders proclaimed that individuals have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and timing of their children. Forty years later, modern contraception remains out of reach for hundreds of millions of women, men and young people.

This year’s World Population Day reaffirms the right of people to plan their families. It encourages activities, events and information that will help make this right real – especially for those who often have the hardest time getting the information and services they need to plan their families, such as marginalized populations and young people.

When people can plan their families, they can plan their lives. They can plan to beat poverty. They can plan on healthier mothers and children. They can plan to gain equality for women. Plan to support World Population Day this year!

(emphasis mine)

This is my most-favored cause, and I strongly recommend you give to the UNFPA, as it’s extremely underfunded.

Digital Content Fragmenting

Uncertainty aplenty as Web, media leaders convene

“Media, Internet moguls meet at Idaho luxury retreat, most seeking more online revenue

Even the top Internet companies — save maybe Google Inc. — are seeing revenue growth slowing as online audiences fragment. And they worry that, without steady access to high-quality content, they won’t be able to attract enough viewers to keep growing fast.”

Here’s an idea: buy niche content! AOL did it when it bought Weblogs, Inc. With that measly $25MM outlay, they bought access to readers of the web’s #1 blog (Engadget), car nuts (Autoblog), gamers (Joystiq), luxury consumers (Luxist), and Apple fans (TUAW).

Niche digital content is the future. As an example, I used to know some car guys who would spend upwards of two hours per day browsing through a BMW-centered auto enthusiast forum called DTMPower. Tens of thousands of others also browsed the forum regularly, and DTMPower made a perfect niche for advertising. Most of the users drove BMWs and bought aftermarket upgrade equipment, and relevant ads from BMW tuning shops, aftermarket specialists, and BMW sales departments sponsored the site immediately.

If a niche as small as a single auto brand can generate this kind of loyalty and readership, big media should take the hint and buy small niche players.

Media is increasingly fragmented. The future of media is not the newspaper, aiming for the masses. The future of media is the electronic magazine (the blog); it gives the people what they want, and users can decide which niche content they want to consume.

Tennis History

If you missed the Wimbledon Men’s Final, just go watch it.

John McEnroe himself said that the match was the best he’s ever seen in his life, and he’s seen a lot of matches.

It was the longest final in Wimbledon’s history. The match lasted 4 hours 48 minutes – I’ve ran a marathon in less time. Both players battled it out. At one point, Federer was down two-sets-to-none, then rallied back to win the next two sets, keeping himself in the match. At two-games-to-two in the fifth set, Nadal was making lots of errors, essentially defeating himself. Miraculously, the rain started again, giving Nadal a rain delay and much-needed time to regroup and recharge.

I don’t want to spoil the match for anyone, but when you watch it, don’t miss the end (John McEnroe is overcome with emotion and awkwardly hugs Roger Federer, who immediately marches off).

Paul Pierce

I’m watching SPORT+, a channel on Greek cable, and they’re replaying a Lakers/Celtics game from this year’s NBA finals. One of the Celtics players, Paul Pierce, was famously featured in a Chappelle Show episode a few years back getting stabbed. Pierce was stabbed 11 times (in real life) at a Boston nightclub in 2000. Miraculously, the following season he was the only member of his team to start in 81 games or more.

Paul Pierce was the MVP of this year’s NBA Finals, and as I watch this game, I can see why. He’s draining 3′s all over the place! Clutch!

Basketball is really popular in Greece. The Greek National team has beat the United States plenty of times, including in the 2006 FIBA World Championships, when they rallied from a 12 point deficit to defeat the Dream Team.

When I consulted the FIBA World Basketball Championships winners table, I found very few US victories (Spain is the current world champion titleholder). Most world titles have been won by Brazil, Yugoslavia, or the USSR. In fact, half the time, the US didn’t even make it into the final game! Well, I guess it’s not really surprising considering it’s not really “our” game, being invented by a Canadian and all.

Next week, the Olympic qualifiers for basketball comes to Athens, and I’m defnitely going watch Canada, Puerto Rico, Greece, and the 9 other contenders battle it out for a chance to play in the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Bumbershoot Lineup/Tix

You should grab your tickets to Bumbershoot now (for a limited time only, they’re $25/day (instead of $40/day) using this link).

The lineup is here.

I’m excited to see the following:

Estelle (she of the Kanye track “American Boy”

Grynch

Brother Ali

Kid Sister

Stone Temple Pilots

T.I.

Del tha Funkee Homosapien

Flobots

The Offspring

Maybe I’ll see you there?!

Louis Bacon on Irresponsible Population

Q: What’s the most pressing issue facing the world?

A: “A Malthusian population explosion intersecting with globalization. We have encouraged all 7 billion of the world’s inhabitants to live like Westerners, and now that they have taken the bait, we are realizing it is impossible on this small Earth. The first big hit has been to the environment; the next, which we are witnessing, is to energy prices, and it is leading to food shortages and eventually more famines.
Governments are only starting to address the problem, and the planet’s most inventive and powerful economy, America’s, is leading only from the rear, if at all, given our present administration.”

From Alpha magazine, June 2008.

More about billionaire investor/environmentalist Louis Bacon

Coffee Culture

Just as the U.S. Congress renamed ‘French Fries’ “Freedom Fries” in 2003 after the French criticized the American invasion of Iraq, so too was Turkish coffee (τούρκικος καφές) renamed Greek coffee (ελληνικός καφές) after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. In fact, Turkish coffee also goes by the name Armenian coffee or Cypriot coffee, depending on which country you’re in.

Coffee originated in Ethiopia and Yemen, but was popularized by the Arabs, and later, the Turks.

The word coffee is derived from the Levantine Arabic qahwa or qahweh. When it was introduced to Constantinople in 1554 by Arabs from Damascus and Aleppo, the Turkish pronunciation of qahweh became kahve, and this Turkish word brought us the German word kaffe, the French and Spanish café, and finally, the English word, coffee.